Review: Old Potrero Christmas Spirit (2025)
Hotaling & Co. is a San Francisco-based distillery that officially split from Anchor Brewing around 2017, an especially fortuitous turn given the latter company’s closing in 2023. (The brewery has since been purchased, though there’s no immediate sign it will restart operations.) But Hotaling’s history predates that legal separation by decades, and the distillery has been producing a variety of spirits — including Old Potrero rye — since 1994.
One of Hotaling’s more esoteric products is Old Potrero Christmas Spirit, a whiskey distilled from various runs of Anchor Brewing’s once-famed San Francisco Christmas Spiced Ale. A decade ago, we reviewed an early version of that distillate, which was bottled and sold as an unaged white whiskey.
In recent years, Christmas Spirit has returned to the market as an aged whiskey. The 2025 release was double copper pot distilled from a 2015 batch of Christmas Ale, then aged for nine years in first fill Old Potrero Straight Rye Whiskey barrels. The release is proofed to 50% abv, limited to just 462 bottles, and comes with a $140 MSRP for a 700ml.
Old Potrero Christmas Spirit (2025) Review
Despite the actual recipe of the beer — which Anchor Brewing usually kept somewhat close to the chest — the early nose is in line with what one expects from Old Potrero distillate: spicy, rye-forward, and boasting plenty of herbal character. (The use of ex-rye barrels almost certainly has an impact here.) It’s punchy and pronounced for 100 proof, though with relatively little ethanol; the impact here is really from the grain-forward spice. Cinnamon sticks, dried orange peels, pine, and holiday potpourri round out the aromas for a nose that almost screams holiday spice — whether the whiskey’s name predisposes us or not.
The palate starts with a burst of syrupy sweetness before a quick turn into nutty malt, grape must, and lots of wintergreen, which continues on through the finish. It doesn’t exactly taste like a young whiskey, but the barrel’s role here seems more akin to filter than additive, rounding out any rough congeners while imparting only the lightest kiss of wood sugars. Sweet mint gum dominates the midpalate enough that we’re in mint julep territory; thankfully, the whiskey successfully rides the edge between honeyed and cloying.
The back palate and finish turn toward fruit, in this case (and bear with me) berries, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and served with a heaping helping of expressed mint.
This isn’t a run-of-the-mill whiskey by any means, and I don’t anticipate it being a unanimous favorite among bourbon and rye drinkers. But it does an almost uncanny job of capturing prototypical Christmas in a glass. I could very much envision sipping this neat near a Yule log — though I’d be tempted to try it in a Christmas-y Sazerac as well.
100 proof.
A- / $140
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